


You can't sell the past

by lusentoj



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe, Homelessness, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 13:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17224994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusentoj/pseuds/lusentoj
Summary: A homeless Gintoki earns money by selling things at Hijikata's pawn shop. Every day.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Ne eblas vendi ekstempon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15440226) by [lusentoj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusentoj/pseuds/lusentoj). 



> This is a translation from the original Esperanto so many parts come out choppy.
> 
> Happy Solar New Year's!

"Of course, y'don't have to come here _every day_ ," Higikata said gruffly, words unhurried. Holding the cigarette away from his face in order for the words to sound more clearly. Smoke curls and serpents before his face until finally disappearing towards the wooden ceiling, just one layer of layers of smoke-years that drench the walls of the shop.

Halfway across the room, Gintoki hums the melody of a children's television show, crouching down to confirm that the thing he desires — a pale-blue room fan, this time — is still there among the vacuum cleaners, leaf-blowers and cassette players. He's dressed in a Hawaiian-style, floral shirt which is slightly too wide at the waist, pale shoulder muscles visible. Summer shoes the Japanese traditional, a home-woven straw.  
  
"Humans thrive on daydreams," counters Gintoki, and sounds his shoes across the smooth floor to the cashier's desk, fingers tap-tapping like a wave onto the table. "So how much money'll y'get, Hi-kun?"

"Be gotten," corrects Hijikata and hands over the paper slip, numbers noted onto it with a pencil. "Only in a daydream would the money come to me."

Gintoki, for a moment, unintentionally touches his fingers upon the retrieval, and Hijikata feels a sudden warmth at his face, hiding it via the return of the cigarette. Via a hand to his mouth, a bend to the worn register.

"By the way, m'called Sakata Gintoki," he says, as though it means something else. The same time as a tired, wry expression.

"...A pleasure to do business with you," responds Hijikata, feigning to work across the glass display table, fingers burning with shame.

Somewhat loudly right after Gintoki turns to leave, Hijikata's voice appears: "...Well, Mr. Sakata, I wouldn't advise to ever buy a fan. Already coming here every day for small sums of money, clearly you wouldn't be able to pay the electric bill at home, right?"

Gintoki doesn't look at him, but holds an almost laughing expression. Raises a hand to signal goodbye. "Thanks for your concern, but I'm not _that_ stupid."

And goes through the door. Across the road, to the grocery store, to the so-called home made from someone's abandoned door, the fence of what was once a garden, and fallen billboards. The roof supported by branches, and a further mass of branches as tinder lying comfortably beside the lump of blankets called a bed. Just now the weather was warm, but at some point the snow would come, and today's pay would only earn a single package of rice.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first line was an untranslatable joke:
> 
> "Mal'bel'ino — he, Mar'bel'ino" = "ugly woman — hey, beautiful sea woman", just one letter different in Esperanto.
> 
> Another untranslateable:
> 
> "Grandson" (nepo) and "nephew" (nevo) are only one letter different in Esperanto, thus Gintoki's mix-up (he says "child-child" and "brother's child" in his dialect instead but tries to hide his dialect), thus Kondo's confusion when Gintoki messes up the vocab the first time.
> 
> There are more untranslatable things, often occurring in Gintoki's "dialectal" speech, but sadly his weird speech's gonna be a plotpoint.

"Old hag -- hey, beautiful mermaid, d'you have any task for me t'day?" Gintoki goes in the door of the dubiously-lighted bar, as soon as it opens. Otose stands at the drink bar as usual, arms clothed in funereal colours up to the wrists. Pushing out a tired breath at the empty room, at Gintoki's figure at the doorway brilliantly lit by the sun.

"Why so hasty, Brat-toki? Coming every day. Don't you have other clients?" her voice aged, because it'd already been almost ten years since their first meeting.

"Not really," he responds unseriously, caressing his stubble a little, at the neck. Shirt the same as the previous day's, white sun-pants slightly too long, not managing to cover his ankles. "Don't gotta task?"  
  
Otose pauses calmly, thinking of the slightly-dark walls and the dark wood everywhere, of how after a few hours the drinkers would come and so would the serving girls with high-toned voices, enlivening the space. "Sweep... Polish the boards, and wipe down the walls and seats with a rag."

His physical expression changed to happiness, a beautiful gait and posture, and she lied: "...I cleaned up the upper storey and it seems my husband left some clothing, you know? Perhaps something will fit."

"Clothes of the unliving? Wouldn't they come a-ghosting?" Gintoki holds the broom, as though unafraid, but the bristles aren't moving against the floorboards. The outside light shines at his back like a halo, and apart from that she sees only a shadowed outline.

"...Don't talk like that. I'm advising you, ghosts don't exist in this country." She blows a cloud out of her long smoking pipe, but between her and the pawn shop, the smell of smoke had long since affixed itself to his skin.

"Oh really," and he laughs.

"And watch your grammar! Your pronunciation's perfect, but your grammar needs to be hidden! Just how many times do I have to say it, Gintoki!"

"Yeah yeah... but no one notices..."

"The police notice. And as you know, some policemen don't dress like the police."

She went to the upper storey to collect the clothing, and after a few hours Gintoki left with a bag of shirts and pants, socks and scarves. And a box of women's jewelry for Hijikata.

\---------

"Oh, does Hi-kun not work today?" he asks, a quick glance when he pops just his head into the pawn shop. The small box rests at his chest, as though a trifle. Mr. Kondo stands at the table, an erotic magazine held in two hands.

"Hi-kun? Oh, Toshiro? He feels sick so isn't coming today... Wait, is your name Sakata?"

"That's right," responds Gintoki, still at the doorway. Kondo's voice is loud, the opposite of Hijikata who tends to murmur.

"He has something to give to you... where is it..." Kondo mutters, half-confused, and goes to the back room, the sounds of searching. Returns with a paper fan in his hand, tape affixed to the pale-blue handle.

"Eh?!" laughs Gintoki, pink flowering at his cheeks. "What's this, a joke!?"

"He didn't say, just asked me to hand it to you." responds Kondo, gravely. "Didn't you drop it at some point?"

"Oh, yes, that's right," he lies, taking the fan with a bright, happy face. "My grandson* made it as a gift, and I looked for it everywhere."

"Grandson." Kondo's face returns to that of confusion, strange thoughts flowing in.

"Nephew*, nephew."

"Oh, nephew! I misheard, pardon me. Well, Toshiro will probably be back in two days from now..."

"Doesn't he live close?" he presses.

"Mr. Sakata, unfortunately I don't have the right to inform you of his address, because it's illegal, you know."

"Yes, of course. I just intended to bring some medicine as thanks..."

"Unfortunately. Please wait for two or three days."

"...I understand."

He exits, the fan kept like a treasure in his pocket, happy steps. And Kondo calls out to him thither, through the half-closed door, _be a friend, because aside from me he doesn't have any._ But Gintoki pretends not to hear, step-stepping rapidly to deliver the treasure to his bed.


	3. Chapter 3

When Gintoki approached the table Hijikata paused, taking the thing from him, a strangely tense smile like when one is thinking about something else during a stranger's rambling, and he fingered away the black bangs from his eyes.

"...Oh, sorry, do I smell?" asks Gintoki, a step backwards. "Just came from work, y'know, normally I shower first, ha, my collar's wet, ha, also the front, just noticed now..." Nervous babble.

"Work? Sorry, I thought you'd been laid off, because you come here to sell so much." the strange smile doesn't completely go away, but dissolves into another, real smile, a shine in the eyes, one of the many reasons why Gintoki at some point ceased to visit the other shops, the social holes in his soul dry, crumbling apart, longing.

"Haha yeah, something like that... I do different stuff now, fix roofs, paint houses, clean, dog-watch."

"Really?" says Hijikata, tilting his head, standing there in his respectable shopkeeper's apron, reminding of maids of long-gone eras, shirt-sleeves rolled up at the sweat-inducing, summer heat, arms that had never planted potatoes or dragged grandmother's cadaver, fingers that had never climbed barbed-wire fences in the hours that the sun began to yawn. "Recently the doors at my place've been loud, can you fix 'em?"

"Huh? Daddy never taught you how?"

"Of course not! And don't tell me _your_ dad taught _you_ either." the cigarette in his mouth touched the ash-tray on the table, once, twice, next to the dead bodies of other abandoned cigarettes, a misty grey-black. "The guys who could do that stuff went away a long time ago, y'know? Now we just..." he swings his arm to the side, the hand cigaretteless, fingers stretching from one side of the room to the next, piles and piles of other people's things.

"...buy a new door. Yeah, I know, and it really causes a lack of work. Sure, I'll fix the doors, but feed me a little lunch, maybe a beer..."

And when Gintoki takes the receipt their hands touch again, Hijikata's eyes captured by the blue fan still in the pocket of Gintoki's work clothes, exactly where one would hold the flower of a stunning beauty.

"Well," he says, voice a little morose before the long hours to be, friendless ones. "See you later."


	4. Chapter 4

And awoken early by the breeze through the shabby walls, the first autumn wind carrying the smell of earth and leaves even in this town, temperature slightly lower than yesterday's, wanting to touch underneath the blankets. Except Hijikata, he hadn't touched many people for several years, didn't get so close, no, it's a lie, the now-and-then brushes against strangers in the bar and on the street, oh, but his interested face is something else, how many years...?

Today is Sunday. Today he'd repair the doors. First to the city's swimming pool for a shower, the smell of that poison which this country's citizens accept as natural, then the pawn shop, whither Hijikata would come to show the way. He would examine the doors, assumably white, wooden ones, then take a small trip to the repair shop for tools, but most likely the Pawnist just needed some amount of grease and the following hours would be spent pleasantly. But first, first the pool. 

When they meet in mid-afternoon, Hijikata is already waiting outside the shop, black shoes and black shirt, grey pants, the fashion of poetry-loving youths. The form-fitting, third of a sleeve shirt looks good. The ever-present cigarette blows grey-white at Gintoki's face upon his arrival, irritated words about his lateness, because Gintoki doesn't tend to observe the timepiece on his arm.

"Sorry," he excuses, a hand-swing for a hello, "My shower broke, had to go to the pool."

Hijikata, along a courageous movement that wouldn't be shown during working hours, leans intimately and smells Gintoki's hair, a sudden movement and lack of movement, there on the sidewalk, cars passing, awful exhaust. "Well, sure smells like the pool. So I'll forgive you." a self-satisfied expression, as though a victory.

They stand there, outdoors, out in the open.

Gintoki asks where he lives.


End file.
